Hi Marc. To do the herring thing well , you need a big net with small mesh , a 5 gallon pale , a holding pen , and a live well.
In general , the bigger the better on the net. Be careful though cause the herring will just go right through the holes of a lot of nets.
The holding pen is a laundry basket who's sides are a checkerboard of open and closed spaces. Make a plywood cover with a latched door. Put some foam flotation material around the rim (just tape it on with duct tape. Tie a rope about 10 feet long to the basket. The idea is that the basket floats with the top level with the surface of the water.
You net the herring , and because it often takes a long time to get 10 to 20 , you put them in the floating basket keeper pen. If you put them in the bucket , the first ones caught will be dead before the last ones are caught. The keeper pen is just like a coral for the fish. The river or run water flows through the pen and the fish are fine. Once you have all you need , you dump the fish into the 5 gallon pale and make a dash for the live well.
Once in the live well , the aerator keeps the fish alive. Just add a little ice now and then to keep the wter cool since it will heat up from the heat in the car and from the heat generated by the pump motor. Wiith a nice live well like the one I described , I just leave the fish in the live well if I can park conveniently to the water. For example at Mass Maritime , the car is 10 feet from where I fish so they would stay in the car in the live well.
But suppose I'm at Keene St. I have to park too far away from the car to make it practical to go back to the livewell each time I need a fresh herring. There I would load some into the 5 gallon pale , another mad dash down to the water where I transfer them to the laundry basket keeper pen. That basket floats in the water and the fish are essentially in canal water flowing through the basket. Sometimes the water deep enough to float the basket is out a little past your reach , thats why the basket has a rope on it. When I need a herring , I pull the basket in open the latch , remove a herring , close the hatch , then push it back out to the deeper water to float.
Thats the complete set up.
I would not say that even the Keep Alive tank keeps 100% of the water in the tank. It might leak a few drops at the hole where the wires go through the tank if I come out of a driveway while turning. I may put silicone there. Nothing at all splashes out while simply driving along , even on bumpy roads. Anyway , its 100 times better than my last one but a few drops do get out. A few drops don't hurt. My guess is that a quart or two used to splash out of my old homemade setup by the time I drove around all day. That's too much and doesn't dry out quick and then you get the smell and then the females complain!! <img src="/Images/Happy_Face.gif"><!--e1-->. Since I retired my red pickup , my new truck is a Blazer (SUV) and the tank is keeping it quite dry back there.